The battle was joined. Dr. Raste, in addition to being exasperated, had been piqued by the reports of his patient's singular obstinacy; he had now positively determined to get him into the hospital, and it was this resolve that had prompted him to give special attention to Mr. Earlforward's case, disorganizing all his general work in favour of it. He could not allow himself to be beaten by the inexplicable caprice of a patient who in all other respects had struck him as a man of more than ordinary sound sagacity, though of a somewhat miserly disposition; and the caprice was the more enigmatic in that to enter the hospital would be by far the cheapest way of treating the illness.
Mr. Earlforward's obstinacy, on the other hand, was exasperated and strengthened by the disdainful reception given to his marvellous, his perfectly reckless suggestion about having a private nurse. These people were ridiculously concerned about his health. They had their own ideas. He had his. He had offered an extremely generous compromise--a compromise which would cost him a pot of money--and it had not even been discussed; the wonder of it had in no way been recognized. Well, on the whole he was glad that the suggestion had not been approved. He withdrew it. He had only made it because he felt--doubtless in undue apprehension--that he was not yet beginning to progress towards recovery. He admitted to himself, for example, that whereas on the previous day he had been interested in his business, to-day his business was a matter of indifference to him. That, he knew, was not a good sign. But, then, to-morrow would certainly show some improvement. Indigestion--and he was suffering from nothing but acute indigestion--invariably did yield to a policy of starvation. As for hospitals, he had always had a horror of hospitals since once, in his insurance days, he had paid a visit to a fellow-clerk confined in a fever-ward. The vision of the huge, long, bare room, with its rows of beds and serried pain and distress, the draughts through the open windows, the rise and fall of the thunder of traffic outside, the semi-military bearing of the nurses, the wholesaleness of the affair, the absence of privacy, the complete subjection of the helpless patients, the inelasticity of regulations, the crushing of individuality: this dreadful vision had ineffaceably impressed itself on his imagination--the imagination of an extreme individualist with a passion for living his own life free of the obligation to justify it or explain it. He had recalled the vision hundreds of times--and never mentioned it to a soul. He did not intend to die of his illness; he knew that he would not die of it, but he convinced himself that he would prefer anything, even death, to incarceration in a great hospital. Were he wrenched by force out of his bed, he would kick and struggle to the very last, and his captors should be stricken with the fear of killing him while trying in their misguided zeal to save him. He read correctly the pertinacity in the doctor's face. But he had never encountered a pertinacity stronger than his own, and illness had not weakened it, rather the reverse; his pertinacity had become morbid.